1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system and a method for saving the setting of an interrupted scanning or printing process in a storage server connected via a LAN and/or the Internet, and then restoring the setting when restarting the scanning or printing process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recent reinforced IT environments and improved security have made it possible to securely treat information about individual users. As a result, more storage services that use networks such as the Internet have been provided, not only in offices, but also in public environments such as convenience stores. Accordingly, a user can save a document scanned in a convenience store as image data in a storage server and refer to the data in an office or at home. In addition, a file (including image data, text document, and the like) saved in a storage server in an office or at home can be printed at a convenience store.
However, when scanning is interrupted, the user may have to start the scanning again from the first page, or scan the remaining pages and then merge two files (scanned documents before and after the interruption, respectively) into one file. Regarding the case where the scanning is interrupted partway, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-237403 describes a technique in which image data obtained by the partial scan and remaining data obtained by the later scan are treated as one data set.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-11232 discloses that printing can be performed by saving print setting parameters as one job associated with print target data in a local storage region of a printer and then specifying the job.
As described above, according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-237403, when the user interrupts scanning, the image data can be treated as one data set. However, in the technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-237403, the image data obtained by a second scan processing may have different scan settings, such as resolution, color specification of monochrome or color, size specification of the document file, and reading density. Thus, a file including unified data typically cannot be created unless the user checks the data with such intention.
In the technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-11232, the scan setting or print setting at the time of interruption cannot be shared with other scanners or printers even if saved, since the destination for saving the setting is the local storage region of the scanner or printer.